Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

expressly declared by the constitution, that each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member. And he thought, they were called upon to exercise the constitutional power of expulsion, in the present instance, by the respect due not only to themselves as legislators, but to their constituents. And as they valued the reputation of the national legislature, both at home and abroad, as they regarded the American character, uninfluenced by the spirit of party, without taking into view the relative characters of the person who offered, and the person who received the insult, without attending to the infinite distance there was, between the one and the other, they were bound to give their votes, upon the present occasion, under the influence only of a high sense of duty and of honor. And under these impressions, he said, he had attentively and impartially considered all the circumstances of the present case, as they had appeared in evidence. And he found, it was fully proved, that an offence of a gross and injurious nature had been committed by the member from Vermont (Mr. Lyon) against the person of the member from Connecticut (Mr. Griswold) that the conversation which produced an altercation between them originated with the member from Vermont; that it was a violent and groundless attack upon the public character of the member from Connecticut; inasmuch as he was represented to be regardless of the public good, and entirely actuated by selfish sordid views; that this indecent attack upon his political integrity was repelled by a retort that the occasion fully justified; that in consequence of that retort, the member from Vermont committed within these walls, and whilst the house was sitting, the gross indecency stated by the committee of privileges, and of which the very Speaker of the house was an eye witness. And that the member from Connecticut, whose cheek glowed with indignation, and whose arm was nerved by the desire of vengeance, recollecting the place in which he stood, and the respect due from him to that house repressed his resentment. Mr. C. then observed, that the passions of some men, had their feelings been thus outraged by the member from Vermont, would have made him expiate the injury upon the spot. For this outrage committed by him bid defiance to order and decorum, tended to degrade the members of that house from the rank of men, and to reduce them to a level with the meanest reptile that crawled upon the earth. He was therefore compelled to declare, that, in his opinion, nothing short of a vote that would deprive the member from Vermont of a seat in that house, could vindicate the honour of it; which had been deeply wounded through one of its members. He was aware, he said, that the punishment of expulsion was a severe one. And there was no man, who had the feelings appropriate to that character, and whose mind was formed of common materials, but would be deeply affected by it. It must fix a stain upon him who suffered it, for a gross and scandalous offence, that the waters of the ocean could not wash away. It should, however be recollected, that it was no farther disgraceful, than as an unquestionable evidence of the gross indecency that gave occasion to it. And if a sacred regard to justice, to the representative character they sustained, and to their own honour, required that they should inflict that punishment upon a member of that house, they ought not to start at the effects of it. For if the member from Vermont should be compelled to return to his constituents, loaded with the opprobrium necessarily attached, in the present instance, to the punishment contemplated, they would have only to regret the disgraceful circumstance, the painful necessity that had led to it. They would have discharged their duty, and the honour and dignity of the house would be preserved.